Will Wikipedia be written by AI?
We ran an experiment pitting a human editor vs ChatGPT.
🔔 Wiki Briefing
Will Wikipedia be written by AI?
No surprise, AI has been a hot topic on Wikipedia: earlier this year, Slate asked if ChatGPT would be used to write articles, and in the the summer, Vice wrote that AI was "tearing Wikipedia apart"—not quite, but they were debating how and when it should be used. Here at Beutler Ink, we ran an experiment seeking to pit a human editor vs. ChatGPT in writing a new article. However fast ChatGPT may be, the human won. Currently, an effort is under way to create a sitewide policy governing AI use in editing.
What's the real deal? LLMs and AI chatbots are good at mimicking Wikipedia's style, and one can imagine a near future where specialized tools are used to automate certain parts of Wikipedia's development and maintenance, just as less-"intelligent" bots long have been. But Wikipedia isn't going to write itself anytime soon.
📰 In the News
Who got caught editing their own page this time?
Republican lawmakers have been having a tough time with Wikipedia lately. Only a few weeks ago, NY Rep. Mike Lawler was blocked from Wikipedia for editing his own entry. (The Daily Beast, who broke the story, mistakenly reported he was "banned"—and later missed the fact his account was reinstated before many of these articles were published.) Now the Beast is back on the case as congressional hopeful Anthony Sabatini was just found to have plagiarized his University of Florida 2021 honors thesis on Nietzsche from Wikipedia, among other places. Wikipedia's estimation in the academy has risen over time. Professors once warned students to stay away from it, and now there are hundreds of university courses every semester that incorporate Wikipedia into its curriculum. Collaboration is now welcome—plagiarism still is not.
📚 Research Report
Hoax Articles
Hat tip to Wikipedia's own online newspaper, The Signpost, a recent study found that hoax articles are most often created about topics in the news. According to the authors: "This is consistent with the idea that the supply of false or misleading information on a topic is driven by the attention it receives." Fortunately, the number of hoaxes has fallen significantly over the years, though they can still make headlines when they are found.
🧩 Wikipedia Facts
Less than 0.2% of all Wikipedia accounts ever created are still active today: fewer than 116,000 accounts out of almost 46 million registered since 2015
💡 Tips & Tricks
Want to know which Wikipedia articles link to a particular Wikipedia article? No problem: every Wikipedia article has a special page called "What links here". It can be found in the right-hand sidebar. Here is that page for the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and here it is for the Slinky.
